


Restraint

by Wagnetic



Category: due South
Genre: Bondage, Enthusiastic Consent, Kink Negotiation, Light D/s, M/M, Wrist Cuffs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 13:52:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1552736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wagnetic/pseuds/Wagnetic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Deputychairman's Paul Gross Handcuff Fest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Restraint

**Author's Note:**

> Massive thanks to Seussian for being a spectacular and incredibly supportive beta reader. You're the best.

It started out as one of Ray’s idle threats. Fraser had taken an ill-advised jump from a fire escape that was a bit higher than he’d initially realized, and the impact had resulted in a bimalleolar fracture. Or in Ray’s coarser language, “a seriously fucked up ankle.” It was a clean break and he was equipped with a cast, so naturally Fraser had intended to continue to aid Ray in the case, but Ray was insistent. “If you try to go chasing criminals with that broken foot instead of resting it like you’re supposed to, so help me, I will handcuff you to the bed.”

Normally Fraser would have corrected him, as it was his ankle that was injured and not his foot, but he was rather distracted by the image Ray’s words called to mind. They’d never discussed the possibility of engaging in more unconventional sexual activities, but he couldn’t deny that he found the idea appealing. The thought of Ray taking control so completely somehow managed to excite, frighten, and soothe him all at once, and with only deskwork to occupy his time, Fraser found himself focusing on the image with a frequency that bordered on obsession.

He supposed the attraction had something to do with his tendency to take a leading role in most situations. In his more reflective moments, Fraser could admit that it was a strenuous way to live - exhausting even - but it was part of his nature and he couldn’t stop. Not when failure to contribute his best effort might cost someone their safety or even their life. And even if there wasn’t a cost, Fraser still wouldn’t know how to stop. After his mother died, it had been his responsibility to take care of himself, by and large. His grandparents always provided for him, but in some ways they were rather like his father. Though they loved him very much, they didn’t express emotions openly and they were much more likely to stress the importance of hard work and a thorough education than to indulge a boy’s desire to play. Idleness had been discouraged most of all, and Fraser carried that ethic with him through his childhood and adolescent years, into his training at the depot and on. Industriousness was his natural state of being now, and to stray from that made him uneasy.

In Ray’s apartment, however, he understood that an idle moment would hurt no one. It was illogical of course, but in Ray’s home he felt comfortable doing nothing. That was one of the many gifts Ray had given him, this place where he could let down his guard without fear of repercussions. He had learned to place his faith in Ray, and Ray had never failed to come through for him. Ray would take a bullet for him, jump through a skylight for him, ride a motorcycle through a window, all to keep him safe, and he knew that Ray trusted him too. They were partners in every sense of the word.

It was that faith in Ray that enabled him to ask for what he wanted. In the calm of a post-coital doze, Fraser rested his head on Ray’s shoulder, stroked a hand through his sweaty hair, and said, “Did you mean what you said about the handcuffs?”

“Hmm?” Ray had his eyes closed and he was leaning his head into Fraser’s hand. Most likely he was already more than half asleep, but now that Fraser had found the courage to raise the subject he was reluctant to let it go.

“When I fractured my ankle. Do you remember?”

“I wasn’t serious. Just wanted you to do what the doctor said for once.” Even with his senses dulled by sleep, Ray’s hunches were as accurate as ever. He opened his eyes and guided Fraser’s head to the pillow, shifting his weight to one elbow to look Fraser in the eye. “Would you like that?” His voice was curious, but calm.

Fraser had to look away, but he found the voice to answer. “Yes, Ray.”

“Yeah?”

“Very much so.” Now that he’d made his confession, he found that he couldn’t keep himself from speaking. “I find that I can’t stop thinking about it, about not being able to touch you. Not being able to do anything, while you decide everything, do anything you want with me. I can’t let go, not on my own, but I need to. I need—” Oh, that was certainly too much. The last thing he wanted to do was put Ray on the spot. “If you’re willing.” He added hastily. “If you’d enjoy it. I wouldn’t ask you to do anything you wouldn’t be comfortable with.”

Ray’s warm hand curled over his jaw, turning Fraser’s face back to him. “I’d like that. I’d like that a lot. You know I’ll look out for you, right? And I want to do this with you. You just have to tell me if you decide you don’t like it, okay?” He smiled then, a bright, sweet smile, and Fraser knew it was all right.

\---

Fraser did some research for the sake of proper preparation, and though most of what he read seemed fairly intuitive, he was glad to have the information laid out in writing. Communication was vital to bondage, as well as to any other practice under the category of BDSM. A predetermined word and/or gesture should be used to indicate a desire to stop, particularly in any scene involving consent play. He also learned that if one wished, one could purchase specific paraphernalia designed for both restraint and comfort. While this would clearly be the more practical choice, it was the idea of Ray’s handcuffs that stayed with him.

It took Fraser a few days to relay this information to Ray, but ultimately the strength of his fantasies won out over his reticence to address the matter. They were sitting on the couch in the living room, legs touching, comfortably close even though there was more than enough room for two men to sit further apart. Fraser had agreed to Chinese takeout and assented to Ray’s subsequent insistence on eating in the living room because that, apparently, was the natural habitat of chow mein and Mongolian beef. It seemed as good a time as any.

Fraser set down his food, placing the chopsticks down on his napkin, and braced himself. “I did some research about, well, what we talked about.”

“Yeah? What’d you find?” Ray continued to eat, though Fraser knew him well enough to guess that this was a purposeful display of casualness for Fraser’s benefit.

“Well, it seems that handcuffs are ill-advised, but there are other devices—”

“Devices, Fraser?”

He saw the edge of a smirk on Ray’s lips and continued.  “That’s the wrong word, I suppose. Wrist cuffs with fur or synthetic padding, or made from especially soft leather.” He sighed. “Really, I should have thought of the problems involved with the use of handcuffs. They leave bruises and abrasions. But I suppose that I wasn’t really thinking in terms of practicality.”

Ray put down his carton to look Fraser in the eye. “I don’t want you to get hurt,” he said. “Unless— Do you want it to hurt?”

Fraser hadn’t thought about it until now. “No, I suppose not. It’s, uh, the immobilization itself that I care about, but perhaps we could try it at some point. That is, if we decide to do this more than once…” It really shouldn’t be so hard to talk about. It was only Ray here, who loved him and who had agreed to this. Perhaps it was one more boundary he would have to cross: the first step in giving up control.

Ray brought him out of his thoughts with a tap to his forehead. “You in there, Frase?”

“Yes, sorry. I was just distracted.”

“Okay. Anything else I should know?”

“Safewords. Of course we could just say ‘stop,’ or ‘slow down,’ or ‘keep going,’ but it would be prudent to use them anyway, as a kind of shorthand.” Fraser insistently did not look away from Ray. The first step was to talk. He could do that. “In all honesty, I think I would find the formality of it comforting.”

“Protocol’s good. Got it. What words do you want then? Standard red for stop, green for go, yellow for slow it down?” He must have been amused by Fraser’s expression, because he grinned and slung an arm over Fraser’s shoulders. “Hey, I can do my five P’s just as well as the next guy.”

“Right you are, Ray. And that was actually what I had in mind. Can you think of anything else we need to review?”

“Frase, it’s not a test.” Ray gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze. “It’s tough for you to talk about, huh? I get that, but that’s fine. We’ve got this partner communication thing down now. Buy the cuffs, okay?” He let go of Fraser’s shoulder and shoved his carton at him, snatching the other one up from the coffee table. “And try the beef. You’ve been picking at your food all night and we can’t have you getting skinny like me.”

Ah, now this was familiar ground. “And I suppose this has nothing to do with your penchant for carbohydrates?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ray said through a mouthful of noodles.

\---

The cuffs came a few days later, in a plain, unmarked package, for which Fraser was very thankful. He was distracted at work the whole day, thinking of the box sitting unopened on Ray’s counter. He wondered how it would feel to open it. Embarrassing, probably. He pictured Ray looking over his shoulder, trying to hold back a smirk and failing. Surely the cuffs would look ridiculous sitting in a box full of tissue paper. They’d looked elegant in the photograph on the website, simple brown leather and metal buckles, but they would surely look different out of that context. Perhaps this had been a bad idea.

When he arrived at the apartment however, the box was gone. That night, he saw the cuffs sitting on the bedside table, and to Fraser’s relief, they didn’t look out of place there. They looked right. Fraser began to undress for bed, but Ray put his hands over Fraser’s before he could do more than begin to loosen the lanyard.

“Let me do it.” Ray said. It made sense that Ray should be the one to expose him like that, but it made Fraser shiver all the same. Ray’s touch was so light over the uniform that Fraser could barely feel it, but he could feel the air that touched his skin as the pieces fell away. Ray hung each piece of uniform neatly over the chair, and that little gesture meant more to Fraser than he could say. The sight of Ray kneeling down to unlace his boots filled him with warmth.

Once he was naked, Ray just looked at him and kept looking. Fraser had the urge to squirm or to stand at parade rest as he so often had under scrutiny, but he resisted it and forced his body to be still. This wasn’t an inspection. This was Ray, just seeing him and knowing him like always. The fact that Ray hadn’t undressed yet only brought Fraser’s vulnerability into sharper relief, but that was as good as it was intimidating. “Come on,” Ray said, “Lie down.” Fraser followed Ray to the bed and stretched out on his back, but Ray didn’t lie down with him. He sat next to Fraser, almost touching.

“Ready?”

“Yes, Ray.” He wasn’t calm, exactly, but the nervousness was no more than he had expected and anticipation would only serve to heighten it. Besides, he wanted this.

“Okay then.”

The deerskin was soft, and the cuffs fit perfectly; tight, but still with a bit of give to them. Ray closed them around his wrists one at a time. Fraser knew that the buckles barely made a sound, and yet that small noise in the quiet of the bedroom was so loud in his ears that he nearly flinched.

When Ray attached the cuffs to opposite ends of the bed frame, Fraser felt a surge of fear. He’d been immobilized many times before when cases had gone wrong, but this was different. He had chosen this. There was no strategizing to distract him from the sensation, and to his astonishment, he began to shake. He was perfectly fine, he’d been in situations far worse than this and he’d stayed perfectly composed, but he couldn’t stop and the inability to control his body only made the shaking worse. There was something that felt right about that, though. It was a step in the right direction just to feel this. He hadn’t asked Ray to bind him in order to be comfortable and he had been perfectly aware that ceding control wouldn’t be easy.

Ray sat still beside him, worry lines showing deep in his face. “What’s your color?” he asked. He cupped his hand around the nape of Fraser's neck in a steady grip that grounded him. That was good. Ray’s touch was familiar and safe, and Fraser sighed and leaned his head into Ray’s hand.

“Green. It’s overwhelming, but I knew that it would be. I still want to do this.”

Ray leaned down so his forehead rested against Fraser’s and said, “Alright. Just tell me if it’s too much. We’re going to go slow. For now just focus on being here, okay?”

“Alright.”

Ray’s touches started out steady and soft, just gentle strokes down Fraser’s cheeks and across the back of his neck. He ran his hands down Fraser’s chest and stopped with his hand over Fraser’s heart. It drew Fraser’s attention to his pulse, which was faster than it really ought to be. He knew techniques to slow it of course, but that would defeat the purpose of the exercise. He probably shouldn’t be thinking of it as an exercise either.

They stayed like that until Fraser settled into the touch, and then Ray brought his hands back up to Fraser’s shoulders and rubbed until the tension there began to ease. Fraser had always appreciated Ray’s hands, with their long fingers and oddly shaped joints.

Ray murmured to him all the while. “You’re good, Frase, you’re good. It’s just you and me here. I’ve got you. We’re good.”

Fraser felt his mind begin to drift as Ray began to knead at the tight muscle between his neck and shoulder. Any trace of embarrassment or fear subsided and his thoughts lost their usual sharpness. It was almost like the feeling he got when he settled in to sleep after a long day of physical labor, but he wasn’t sleepy. He was… content.

Time faded and he lost measure of everything but Ray’s touch. Ray’s hands were everywhere, stroking his face and neck, sweeping down his chest and legs, then up the insides of his thighs and over the bones of his hips. Ray knew all his most sensitive spots: the base of his throat, the crease of his hip, and the ridge of his ear. Fraser found himself straining towards Ray’s hands, and the motion only served to highlight his immobility, arousing him further. He was moaning now, and he knew that he would normally clamp down on those sounds, but he didn’t feel the need.

Fraser wanted desperately to kiss Ray or to touch him, to make Ray feel as good as he felt, but all he could do was move his body towards Ray like an offering. And ask. He could ask.

“Will you kiss me?” He sounded strangely sluggish and Ray smiled at the sound of it. He kissed Fraser softly, then more deeply when Fraser moaned and turned his head for a better angle. It was sweet and perfect and not nearly enough. The world came back into focus and God, he needed more.

“Ray, please.”

“You want me to touch you?” Ray’s voice was as intent as Fraser’s was desperate.

“Yes.”

Ray’s hand was hot and tight and then it was gone. He was standing up, getting off the bed.

“Ray?”

“I’m just taking off my clothes. I’m not going anywhere.” In a moment he was back, stretching out next to Fraser with his face tucked against his neck. Fraser could hear Ray’s even breathing in his ear and Ray wrapped an arm around his chest and settled a leg between Fraser’s. “See? I’m right here with you.” Perfect.

Ray brought his hands up to hold Fraser’s wrists tightly, as though Fraser weren’t already bound, and Fraser gasped. All he could feel was Ray’s grip, Ray’s claim on him, and oh, he wanted that.

“Yours.” The word was out of his mouth, faint and hoarse before he knew that he meant to say it, but he was glad to hear it in the air between them. “Yours, Ray. Please.“ He couldn’t ask coherently. He’d lost his words and he’d never had the words for this to begin with, but Ray understood.

“Yeah, you’re mine, Fraser. You’re mine, and I’ve got you.”

Ray was shifting, rubbing against Fraser’s thigh. He left sharp, biting kisses where the uniform would cover them and tender little licks where it wouldn’t. Fraser strained against him until Ray pushed up, straddling Fraser’s legs to hold down his hips.

“Only what I give you.” Oh, that was a tone he’d never heard before. It was deep and rough and possessive. It pulled at him and he arched back in response, not to shift his hips, but to bare his neck further, showing his throat. Ray’s mouth was there in an instant, lips pressing hard but not enough to bruise. “That’s good,” he said between kisses. “If I let go, will you hold still for me?”

“I’ll try.”

“You’ll try?”

“I will. I’ll hold still. Please.”

Then Ray’s hand was gone from his hip and stroking him, so tight and slow, and it was far worse than anything he’d endured on guard duty, but he couldn’t move. He’d promised. The hand that was still on his hip was tight enough that it almost hurt, and Fraser found that he didn’t mind that tinge of pain at all. He was mesmerized by Ray’s touch and the sound of his own frantic breaths. He was aching and helpless and desperate for Ray, and still fighting his body’s insistent need to move. Ray was murmuring in his ear, sweet and rough, and Fraser couldn’t speak at all except to say “oh” and “please” and when Ray said “now” all Fraser could say was “yes.”

\---

When he opened his eyes again, Ray was unbuckling the cuffs.

“Your wrists are kind of red,” he was saying, “But I bet you have something homemade and gross to put on that.”

“Hmm.”

“There, now you can move again.” A little clink as Ray set the cuffs down. “Are you sore at all?”

Fraser shifted and turned gratefully onto his side. “A bit.”

“I bet you like that too, huh?” There was fondness in his voice. “Scoot over a little, will you?” Ray was pushing at him, and then his body was pressed tight against Fraser’s, Ray’s arm reaching over to pull the covers up around them. “It’s a good look on you,” Ray said. “I like you like this. A lot.”

He liked… Oh. “Did you?” He gestured vaguely downward, as much as he could manage through the haze of contentment.

“Did I come?” Now Ray was laughing, but not a mocking laugh. A joyful laugh. “Yeah Frase. That was not a problem.”

“Good,” Fraser mumbled. “Glad.”

“Yeah, me too, buddy.” Ray snuggled into him, warm and squirming a little awkwardly until he found a comfortable position, just like always, and the familiarity was good too. “I love you, you know.”

“And I, you, Ray,” Fraser managed through a yawn.

Ray snorted. “Go to sleep. If you’re lucky, I’ll even make you breakfast in the morning.”

“And tea?”

“And tea. The weird bark kind and everything.”

“Wonderful,” Fraser sighed, and he heard Ray agree as he closed his eyes again.

 


End file.
